“‘Water!  Water!  What you need is fire, not water!’”

Fred Crolius tells a good story about Foster Sanford when he was coaching at West Point.  One of the most interesting institutions to coach is West Point.  Even in football field practice the same military spirit is in control, most of the coaches being officers.  Only when a unique character like Sandy appears is the monotony shattered.  Sandy is often humorous in his most serious moments.  One afternoon not many weeks before the Navy game Sandy, as Crolius tells it, was paying particular attention to Moss, a guard whom Sanford tried to teach to play low.  Moss was very tall and had never appreciated the necessity of bending his knees and straightening his back.  Sanford disgusted with Moss as he saw him standing nearly erect in a scrimmage, and Sandy’s voice would ring out, “Stop the play, Lieutenant Smith.  Give Mr. Moss a side line badge.  Moss, if you want to watch this game, put on a badge, then everybody will know you’ve got a right to watch it.”  In the silence of the parade ground those few words sounded like a trumpet for a cavalry charge, but Sandy accomplished his purpose and made a guard of Moss.

The day Princeton played Yale at New Haven in 1899, I had a brother on each side of the field; one was Princeton Class, 1895, and the other was an undergraduate at Yale, Class of 1901.

My brother, Dick, told me that his friends at Yale would joke him as to whether he would root for Yale or Princeton on November 25th of that year.  I did not worry, for I had an idea.  A friend of his told me the following story a week after the game: 

“You had been injured in a mass play and were left alone, for the moment, laid out upon the ground.  No one seemed to see you as the play continued.  But Dick was watching your every move, and when he saw you were injured he voluntarily arose from his seat and rushed down the aisle to a place opposite to where you were and was about to go out on the field, when the Princeton trainer rushed out upon the field and stood you on your feet, and as Dick came back, he took his seat in the Yale grandstand.  Yale men knew then where his interest in the game lay.”

After Arthur Poe had kicked his goal from the field, Princeton men lost themselves completely and rushed out upon the field.  In the midst of the excitement, I remember my brother, George, coming out and enthusiastically congratulating me.

CHAPTER XXII

LEST WE FORGET

Marshall Newell

There is no hero of the past whose name has been handed down in Harvard’s football traditions as that of Marshall Newell.  He left many lasting impressions upon the men who came in contact with him.  The men that played under his coaching idolized him, and this extended even beyond the confines of Harvard University.  This is borne out in the following tribute which is paid Newell by Herbert Reed, that was on the Cornell scrub when Newell was their coach.